I’ve been doing a lot of handwriting practice lately, playing with fountain pens in my old Hobonichi Techo. There is something very satisfying about it… but also frustrating, as I aspire to a level of fluid elegance that I don’t think I’ll ever attain!

So I was quite amazed to see the image below as part of an article about handwriting throughout history. It’s amazing to think of a 13-year old boy writing his schoolwork like this!

In the 19th century, Platt Rogers Spencer introduced the Spencerian method. Notebooks written around 1826 by a 13-year-old boy named John Allison that reside in the Thunder Bay Museum’s archives provide an example of the standard of penmanship that was sought after in schools. Written in Spencerian hand, his school notes, a page of which is shown here, exemplify the type of writing that was desirable at the time: elaborate, slanted, and decorative. By the 1910s, simpler scripts and the growing popularity of the typewriter eventually replaced the Spencerian script as the primary hand taught in schools.

Read more at: Handwriting: A History | Opinion | chroniclejournal.com